News

ARDoC – an Australian First!

ARDoC – January 2013

We are proud to announce the launch of a new Australian Register of Disorders of Consciousness (ARDoC).

Disorders of Consciousness include Coma, Vegetative State (VS), Minimally Conscious State (MCS) and Locked-in Syndrome (LiS). Many of these damaged patients are unable to communicate yet are fully aware of everything that is going on around them. Because there is no Australian register of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) there is scant data on the incidence of DoC in Australia. There is no way of knowing how many patients with these devastating conditions there are in Australia, what the etiologies are, how accurate our diagnostic methods are, which assessment protocols are being applied and which of those are empirically proven to be accurate, what treatments patients are receiving and which of those therapeutic regimes is offering the most beneficial outcomes. Currently, to find DoC patients and their records, one needs to contact every hospital, neurologist, neuro-rehabilitation centre or hospice.

To rectify this situation an Australian register has been established, the Australian Register of Disorders of Consciousness (ARDoC).